All My Children (abbreviated as AMC) is a long-running American television soap opera that has been broadcast on ABC in the U.S. Monday through Friday since January 5, 1970; repeat episodes air weeknights on SOAPnet. Created by Agnes Nixon, the show is set in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a fictitious suburb of Philadelphia. Since its inception, the show has featured Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, one of daytime's most popular characters. The title of the show refers to the bonds of humanity. The poem, written by Nixon, that appears in the title credits' photo album reads.
The show title is sometimes abbreviated by fans and the press as AMC. The first new network daytime drama to debut in the 1970s, All My Children was originally owned by Creative Horizons, Inc., the company created by Nixon and her husband, Bob. The show was sold to ABC in January 1975. Originally a half-hour in length, the show expanded to an hour on April 25, 1977. Previously, the show had experimented with the hour format for one week starting on June 30, 1975, after which Ryan's Hope premiered.
From 1970 to 1990, All My Children was recorded at ABC's TV18 at 101 West 67th St, now a 50-story apartment tower. From March 1990 to December 2009, it was taped at ABC's television studio TV23 at 320 West 66th Street in Manhattan, New York City. In December 2009, the show relocated to Los Angeles and is now produced in Stages 1 and 2 at the Andrita Studios. It was confirmed on August 4, 2009 that All My Children and One Life to Live would go HD. All My Children started filming in High Definition on January 4, 2010 and began airing in High Definition on February 3, 2010. All My Children is the third soap opera to be produced and broadcast in High Definition.
At one time, the program's popularity positioned it as the most widely-recorded television show in the United States. Also, in a departure from societal norms at the time, All My Children, in the mid-1970s, had an audience that was estimated to be 30% male. The show ranked #1 in the daytime Nielsen ratings in the 1978-79 season. Throughout most of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, All My Children was the #2 daytime soap opera on the air. In the Winter of 2009, the locale for taping the series moved from the costly New York City to California. For the first time since 1994-1995 season All My Children ranked in the top three on Nielsen ratings for the week of June 28-July 2, 2010.
Declining ratings in all of daytime television, combined with the loss of long-time draws such as actor David Canary, had the ABC network reconsidering their schedule. On April 14, 2011, ABC confirmed that after 41 years, All My Children has been canceled and will end its run in September of 2011. It will be replaced by a new lifestyle show, The Chew.
Source: wikipedia.org
